Photo: Doug Gray
The Cincinnati Reds don’t exactly have the greatest reputation among their fan base for how well their medical staff is. Most professional sports teams fanbases also feel the exact same way about their teams. But on Wednesday night Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall gave fans of his team ample evidence to show the judge in their case. On the Reds Hot Stove League radio show he said “Towards the end of July he was dealing with a partial torn quad. And he has been rehabbing, he was at the ballpark today. He’s been rehabbing this whole offseason. To his credit he played every day. He tried to grind through it. He tried to play through it.”
Yes, you heard that correctly. The Cincinnati Reds let their franchise star shortstop play for two plus months with a torn quad. One of the big things talked about in the second half of the year was that De La Cruz saw his power just vanish. There was mention that he was dealing with a quad injury, but it was never known publicly until Wednesday night that he actually tore his quad.
The first thing here is that De La Cruz is probably a real tough dude because playing through that couldn’t have been any sort of comfortable. But the second thing is just a question of how you let anyone play through that, much less the guy you are hoping to be able to not only build your franchise around the next few years but the guy you hope can lead your team to where it wants to go.
The decision making involved here is questionable at best. Risking injury even further to De La Cruz seems absolutely insane. Everyone involved is lucky that things didn’t get worse. There should probably be some internal reflection about all of this from the organization, though, because it’s tough to really wrap ones head around that not only did they let him play through that kind of injury, but that it was to the point that it’s now November 19th and he’s still rehabbing the injury. That’s coming from someone who never went to medical school but has stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, so take it for what it’s worth.
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